“My father!” repeated Ursula. “Do you mean that I cannot disinherit him?”
“You cannot. If you happen to die before him, half of your possessions must pass to him. That is the law of the land; and, as I remarked, the law is stronger than you or I.”
“It is stronger than justice,” said Ursula.
The notary shrugged his shoulders.
“The case is altogether exceptional,” he answered. Again he shivered, and looked at the clock. “So I suppose we may as well leave the will-making to a more convenient occasion,” he added, half rising.
“No,” replied Ursula, with an imperious movement; “make it at once, if you please, just as I said. Never mind its being illegal. You will be law, and my father justice.”
“It is exceedingly incorrect,” said the notary.
“A great race like that of the Van Helmonts cannot let itself be tied down by every paltry police regulation,” replied Ursula, proudly. How often had she said so to herself, remembering her first experience of Gerard’s hauteur at the railway station, hammering the thought firmly into her “bourgeois” heart: the high-born are a law unto themselves! So Gerard had understood, so Otto, and so she herself.
“Write it down,” she said, “and leave the rest to us.”
“Now, at once?”